Over the next few months, weapons manufacturers like Lockheed
Martin and BAE Systems will compete to supply the Marine Corps
with “amphibious combat vehicles” (ACVs), priced somewhere
between $3 million and $6 million each.

Marine Corps spokesperson Manny Pacheco told Reuters that, under
the first phase of the ACV program, the plan is to purchase
roughly 200 vehicles. Up to 800 vehicles total could be purchased
over time, with the service requesting $977 in research and
development funding through 2019.

"We look forward to the service's release of their
requirements for immediate and future needs," BAE
spokeswoman Kristin Gossel told Reuters, adding the company has
numerous vehicles it would like to offer the Corps.

According to a report by Defense News last year, the ACV program
is intended to replace the Marine Corps’ previous Effective
Fighting Vehicle (EFV) program, which was ultimately cancelled in
2011 after inefficiently running through a $3 billion budget.
With defense budgets expected to fall over the coming years, the
service is being careful to get things right this time.

“I’m only going to get one bite at this apple — I don’t want
to mess this up,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Jim Amos told
the outlet in 2013.

As noted by the online publication Breaking Defense, the ACV 1.1
is a reimagined version of past projects, though the current
incarnation won’t quite have the same capabilities. The vehicles
will be powerful enough “to cross a river or coastal inlet,
but not necessarily enough to move from a ship at sea to the
beach on their own power. They will probably have to be carried
on some kind of landing craft, at least to within a few miles of
a beach.”

While this project moves forward, Lt. Gen. Kenneth Glueck said
the Marine Corps will also invest in research related to a future
“high water speed” vehicle.

“The MPC or ACV 1.1 that we’re talking about here, it has a
robust swim capability,” Glueck said on Wednesday. “From
all the video that I’ve seen of the different versions, I feel
very confident that you could drive it into the water probably in
sea state three [i.e modest winds and two-foot-high waves], and
it would go ahead and go to the beach.”